New numbers from the Department of Energy put U.S. wind’s share of the country’s electricity production in 2020 at 10%, up from 2013’s 4.5%.

The draft Wind Vision Study projects 20% of the nation’s electricity coming from wind in 2030 and foresees wind becoming more than a third of the U.S. electricity supply by midcentury.

“Wind has done a lot of things that many would have argued in 2008 were unachievable,” said DOE Director of the Office of Wind & Water Power Technologies Jose Zayas in explaining why he calls the new vision “an aggressive yet credible scenario.”

In 2008, the U.S. wind industry had installed 25 gigawatts in 29 states at an installed price of $0.07 per kilowatt-hour. DOE’s projection for 2013 at that time foresaw an installed capacity of 48 gigawatts in 35 states and a price of $0.066 per kilowatt-hour, Zayas said. The 2013 reality was 61 gigawatts of installed capacity in 39 states and a price of $0.045 per kilowatt-hour.

The draft Wind Vision Study is the product of work by over 100 private companies and public agencies and is scheduled for official release in early 2015. It estimates the U.S. wind resource at “more than 10 times our current electric sector capacity.” Its numbers are based on harvesting “less than 5%” of that.

The study projects that by 2020, the installed capacity of U.S. wind will be 113 gigawatts, with 110 on land and 3 offshore. The 2030 total will be 220 megawatts, with 200 on land and 20 offshore. By 2050, the U.S. will have a 405 gigawatt installed wind capacity, with 320 on land and 85 offshore.

What the Wind Vision Study foresees “is a steady growth of 7 gigawatts per year through 2020, followed by 12 gigawatts per year between 2020 and 2030,” explained Terra-Gen Power Government Affairs VP Gregory Wetstone. “That’s a big order. But the industry has been largely on that path. If we can secure the right kind of policies, we can get there.”

“Getting from where we are today to where we need to be will not be easy,” Zayas said. “There are a lot of things that have to happen.”

The study shows cost reduction pathways from now through 2050 for land based and offshore wind, Zayas explained. Given different variables, those costs can be higher or lower. The study attempts to provide clarity aboutwhere the industry must focus to get the more aggressive cost reductions “because cost so strongly impacts deployment.”

The Wind Vision study describes 3 broad areas of action: Reduce the cost of wind, expand developable areas, and increase the economic value to the nation.

Transmission

In the “expand developable areas” category, Zayas said, transmission is a key. Required transmission additions are estimated at approximately 900 circuit miles per year in the 2020s and approximately 1,100 circuit miles per year from 2031 to 2050. This is about the average 850 circuit miles to 900 circuit miles per year built in the U.S. since the early 1990s and the 3,800 circuit miles now under construction, the study reports.

The projected cost for that transmission expansion is an estimated at $4 billion per year, slightly less than the $4.3 billion per year currently being spent on new transmission, according to PJM Vice President Andrew Ott. “And there are no engineering or technical obstacles. Only siting and permitting would limit the necessary growth.”

“What we all acknowledge in the environmental community is the reality of climate change,” replied Defenders of Wildlife President andCEO Jamie Rappaport Clark. “Our renewable energy future and the long term conservation of our rich wildlife heritage are flip sides of the same coin. Finding pragmatic solutions for wind development is very important.”

“There are challenges,” Zayas said. “But we have a track record of being able to meet them.”

Further projections from the draft study, all still subject to revision, include:

Cumulative savings through 2050 of $149 billion will come from reduced fossil fuel purchases that cut power system capital costs, operations and maintenance costs, and fuel costs in power sector generation, storage, and transmission

Electricity rates through 2030 increase just under 1%, but that build-out provides significant “quantified, monetized social benefits” in return, Zayas said. By 2050, rates are expected to drop $0.003 per kilowatt-hour, a 2% savings for ratepayers.

The cumulative 2013 through 2050 reduction of 12.3 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent, producing a savings of $400 billion in averted damage from global climate change.

The reduction in other air pollutants prevents 22,000 premature deaths through 2050 and saves $108 billion in avoided health and economic damages.

Water use is reduced 4% by 2020, 11% by 2030 and 23% by 2050.

Increased wind puts downward pressure on natural gas prices and makes the total electricity system an estimated 20% less sensitive to natural gas price fluctuations, resulting in a $280 billion savings for electricity consumers by 2050.

The final question

The last question is how to tell the story in a way that builds support and the study tries to articulate that, Zayas said. “Wind deployment can provide U.S. jobs, U.S. manufacturing, and lease and tax revenues in local communities to strengthen and support a transition towards a low-carbon economy,” it concludes.

Yearly lease payments to landowners for allowing wind development on their property grow from $350 million in 2020 to $650 million in 2030 and $1 billion in 2050, the study reports. And yearly taxes paid to local communities grow from $900 million in 2020 to $1.7 billion in 2030 and $3.2 billion in 2050.

With the fall of coal and nuclear, with possible limits on shale gas supplies, and with the skyrocketing rise of solar, a veteran wind industry researcher pointed out to Utility Dive informally, wind could be the leader in the U.S. energy mix by mid-century.

“The days when wind was thought of as a boutique industry are gone,” Zayas said.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.

As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.

In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.

As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.

Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.

Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman

"...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.

The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.

She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.

In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.

There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.

In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.

Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."

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